Bridges of Madison County

So we stumbled upon a sign to the "covered bridges of madison county" on our way to Des Moines, so we thought we better go back and check it out. We ended up in the middle of Madison county in a small town called Winterset, really pretty little town - great town square and court house in the middle. We snapped a lot of "madison" pictures for the namesake travelling with us. For some reason the town had a series of Madison County coins they were selling, and as pins were few between we got a 2005 coin for our Madison for the year she was born.

The bridges were interesting, but we had more fun playing at the local park - which had a covered bridge and a tower! Problem was driving a great big fat butted dually ford truck down the narrow winding track to get there was - challenging. But then in the middle of this forest is a clearing with a stone tower - like one would expect on the corner of a castle.

So kids had fun climbing all the way to the top of that (up the rickety ladder and all). Then we went back to the nice park, beautiful lush green grass, an old log cabin, a big stone plaque about the discover of "delicious" apples in the area and two great playgrounds for the kids.


We saw that there was a county campground on the edge of the park as well, so we investigated and toyed with coming back for the weekend, but they were all reserved so I am tagging this for when we next drive past, what a beautiful place to stay for a few days.


We hadnt been to Des Moines so we thought we better check it out before we moved on. We were lucky enough to arrive in the city center as a parade was going down main street. We quickly parked, put sleeping son into the pram and headed down the block to see a great parade.


I don't know how much we missed but it went for another hour past us. We saw marching bands, which little miss almost 3 loved. She loves the trumpets and the drums. Speaking of drums, there was a float with all these kids with drumkits and they were banging away to tunes, and really looked like they were having the most fun.


There were huge tractors, semi trailers, fire engines and little atv's - so Denny quickly woke up and enjoyed leaning out down the street seeing what machine was coming soon.


So needless to say, with a good parade, we have fond memories of downtown Des Moines.


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